One day with Aubrey
by rustyliver
Summary: Beca caught the words but the meaning passed her by


Beca doesn't believe in fate.

Beca believes in probability.

Eight years ago, she was at a club for a gig. During her break, some guy bought her a drink. She can't remember much about him except he had a kind smile and the first sentence he uttered to her wasn't a lousy pick up line.

She liked him enough to tell him to wait for her at the back entrance in an hour. There were roughly 1500 people in the club and at least half of them are women. So he had a choice of 750 women to meet in that one hour. So the likelihood of him waiting for her was not very high. But when she walked out the door, there he was.

They went for coffee so she could make sure he wasn't a serial killer. And after that, they went back to her studio apartment. She pushed him on her couch because her bed was one that folded into the wall and it's been a while. But she still remembered the condom. So she went to the bathroom to get it. And if she read the box, she'd know that there is a 0.9 percent chance that it could break.

Not that she would care because the odds are on her side.

But that's the thing about probability. Unless the probability of something is zero, that something can certainly happen.

So two and a half weeks later, she found herself peeing on ten different sticks. All of them said she was pregnant.

Eight years later, she's at a kids' party, trying to avoid conversations with other parents as she watches her son who currently seems to be in a very intense sword fight despite his 0.9 percent chance of existing.

She smiles and wonders if something with a probability less than 0.01 like him would ever happen to her again.

And her question is soon answered when her eyes find Aubrey Posen.

...

Beca doesn't recognize her at first and who can blame her? Aubrey's face is painted white and her nose is round and red.

But Beca can always recognize the way her back stiffens when a boy pulls on her giant trousers. And Beca has to rub her eyes to make sure because Aubrey doesn't yell at the boy. Instead, she makes a giraffe out of a balloon and gives it to him.

Beca doesn't even notice it when her feet start moving towards Aubrey. The next thing she knows, Aubrey is squealing her name in delight which surprises Beca. She thought Aubrey would be mortified because why else would Aubrey Posen be standing in front of her looking a lot like a clown unless something unfortunate happened to her. But here she is, wearing a smile so wide even the smile painted on her lips can't hide it.

Aubrey tells her she needs to entertain the kids for the next hour or so and then they could catch up.

And she utters words Beca can't believe can come from her mouth. "It's so nice to see you, Beca."

...

Beca watches this Aubrey and compares her with the Aubrey she knew.

This Aubrey is more patient. She doesn't snap when a kid pelts her with an M&M. It annoys her, Beca can tell, because that vein on her forehead still pops out. And Beca waits for the ensuing chaos when the kid throws another M&M.

But Aubrey surprises her again. She makes a show out of it. She catches the M&M with her mouth and mutters, "Thank you."

The kid throws another one. She catches it again, and again. And again.

By the time the kid's M&M's bag empties, the whole backyard is applauding. And Aubrey bows and says, "And that's the show for today."

All the kids and even some adults groan. So she promises them balloons shaped in any object they want. Then she points, "I'll be sitting next to that pretty lady over there."

So this Aubrey is generous with her compliments too.

"So what have you been up to?" Aubrey asks casually like a kid hasn't just pinched her nose.

Beca points to her Sam. "That. That boy over there."

"Oh," Aubrey says as she tries to figure out how to make a teddy bear out of her balloons.

"Why else would I be at a kids' party?" Beca says. But she supposes it isn't just Aubrey who is full of surprises.

Aubrey just hums her response. "And where is Mr Beca?" she asks. When Beca doesn't answer, "Mrs Beca?"

"It's just me and Sam," Beca tells her.

Aubrey's brows furrow but Beca thinks it's because she's concentrating on her creation. She does a series of twists and turns to her balloon and ten seconds later, she has a teddy bear in her hands.

"You know," she says after handing the teddy bear to the girl who requested it, "if someone asked me before today what do you think Beca Mitchell is doing, I would never have guessed single mom."

It might be the clown makeup but Beca doesn't think she said that with judgment. It's more like a passing thought.

"The me from college wouldn't have guessed it either," Beca admits. "But you know, things happen."

"They do," Aubrey nods.

"Yeah. I mean look at you. You're a…" Beca hesitates, not knowing if calling a clown clown is offensive.

"I'm a clown," Aubrey says, chuckling. "There's no other way of saying it. And we in the clown business are actually very proud of the name."

"Good to know," Beca mutters.

Then another kid comes bounding and squeals for a dinosaur as big as his tiny arms can stretch. Aubrey agrees to his request and sets to work.

Beca watches her again, noticing the way her eyes focus intensely on the balloons and thinks there is still some of the old Aubrey in there.

...

But there's a part of the old Aubrey that she never knew about.

"So you're Beca Mitchell?" Kelly asks.

Apparently, she is Aubrey's sister. Aubrey's appearance at her son's party was a familial gesture. Aubrey doesn't do private parties. She tours around the country with a circus and does much more challenging stunts than honking her nose and catching M&M's with her mouth.

Beca nods.

"_The_ Beca Mitchell?"

Beca nods again.

"Oh my god, Rebeca. I never thought you were _the_ Beca Mitchell."

She wonders what Aubrey has been saying about her that bestowed her this celebrity.

"She's crazy," Aubrey tells her later, shaking her head wearily. "I might have mentioned you once or twice and somehow she is convinced that I had a crush on you."

Beca's eyebrow arches. "Are you sure you didn't?" she asks. She knows it's ridiculous but she can't resist teasing Aubrey. Maybe it's nostalgia creeping. "I mean it makes so much sense. You were always so tense around me."

"You were a difficult girl to deal with."

"And you hated it when Jesse flirted with me."

"He's a Treble and in the end, I didn't mind."

"How about that time I flashed you my imaginary dick?"

"So classy," Aubrey says, rolling her eyes. "How could I not be in love with you?"

And Beca saw it. The vulnerability she had only ever seen flash in Aubrey's eyes once.

And she thinks maybe that part of the old Aubrey, the one she had missed, isn't completely gone yet.

...

She tries to brush it off because it's Aubrey Posen.

The girl who professed her hate for Beca during the farewell party Beca threw for her and her best friend.

Aubrey had gotten really drunk and started giving out a special speech to each of the Bellas.

Chloe was her first victim. "We're going to grow up and I know, I know, everyone says this, that we'll keep in touch so they don't say things they should because everything is so connected nowadays and so how could you forget your best friend, right? Right, aca-bitches?"

Everyone had muttered their agreement amusedly.

"So here it is," she had said to Chloe. "You have been there for me since the first day at Barden and I couldn't have asked for a better stranger to have inappropriately hugged me on a very nerve-wracking first day of college. I love you, Chloe."

Then she went on to the next person and the next and the next until it was Beca's turn.

Beca remembers feeling very uncomfortable. Because Aubrey was giving a lot of love that night and whatever the basis of their relationship was, it wasn't love.

Thankfully, Aubrey didn't tug at her hands like she did with everyone else and said, "You, you are the most annoying person I have ever met. You just crash into my world with your tattoos and ear monstrosities and stupid ideas that went against everything I stood for. I never thought," she paused briefly and for a second Beca thought she had lost her train of thought to her drunken haze. But then, she repeated, "I never thought," with deep gaze into Beca's eyes that made Beca notice the tiny bit of hazel mixed in with the blue or green (it always changes with the light) of Aubrey's eyes, "I would meet someone I so passionately hate in my life. So thank you for that."

Beca chuckled, "You're welcome," missing the way Aubrey had mumbled the word 'hate' unlike her usual words that were always uttered with unrelenting confidence.

They saw each other two or three times after that. Just brief conversations about the weather and excitement for the summer.

They never said goodbye.

One day, Aubrey was there. And one day, she wasn't.

...

But she's here now. A little less rigid. And a little more honest with her flaws.

"I'm one of those stories," she tells Beca. "A young exec who was wasting no time in rising to the top but somewhere in the middle, she went nuts and left everything she had for a childhood dream."

They're at Beca's radio station. Well, it's not really hers but she runs it. They are catching up on the fourteen years that they have missed from each other courtesy of Kelly.

When the party had died down, Sam had run towards her, jumping up and down and saying, "Mrs Crossley said I could stay for a sleepover if you said okay."

"But buddy," she said to him, "we didn't bring any of your clothes."

That was when Kelly sneaked up on them and said, "James is about the same size as Sam. I'm sure I can find something for him to wear."

"I don't want to impose," Beca had said, looking at Aubrey who was staring daggers at her sister. It made Sam cling to Beca.

"Don't do that," Kelly said to Aubrey. "It's scary enough without your clown makeup on."

Aubrey's face immediately softened and she crouched to Sam. Sam's grip on Beca tightened. "Do you want to see me juggle ten things at the same time?"

Sam looked up at Beca. "Don't worry," Beca said to him. He has this weird thing with clowns. He's not afraid of them. He's just very suspicious of them. He once asked her if clowns are aliens. She lowered herself to join Aubrey. "Do you remember my friend with the pretty blond hair from the picture in our living room?"

"Yeah," Sam said.

"Well, if you look carefully," Beca pointed to Aubrey's eyes. "Those are her eyes."

Aubrey took off her red nose.

"See? That's her nose."

"But mom, her hair is red."

Aubrey looked around conspicuously and then back to Sam.

"Do you want to know a secret?" she asked Sam.

Sam nodded.

"This is my secret identity."

"Like Batman?" Sam asked.

"Exactly," Aubrey said, reaching for her fake scalp and revealed some of her blond hair. Then she quickly covered it again.

Sam gasped. "You're really her."

"Yeah. So only you, your mom, Mrs Crossley and James know about it. So can I trust you with this secret?"

Sam nodded excitedly.

"Good," Aubrey said, putting on her red nose again. "Do you still want to see me juggle?"

When Aubrey had left with Sam to find the ten things she can juggle, Kelly said to Beca, "I worry about her sometimes. I mean I don't doubt that she's happy but it's like she's still searching for something."

"You think I can help?" Beca asks.

"Well, the last time she found herself," Kelly says, "it had something to do with going to a circus and remembering the fun times she had at clown camp. And since you're a piece of her past, you might be able to guide her to whatever she's trying to find."

...

Beca doesn't know how much help she can be to Aubrey. She has long forgotten how to float in uncertainty and chase vague dreams. Her feet need to be on a concrete ground because if she slips, Sam will too.

She doesn't hate it. Actually, she loves it. Sam grounds her. He makes her appreciate the things she has instead of leaving them in a heartbeat for a maybe.

That's probably why she notices how Aubrey goes silent with her chin resting on her palm when she is speaking. Aubrey still challenges Beca's every word but now she waits for Beca to finish talking instead cutting her off like she used to.

"You have to admit, he's a huge douche," Aubrey says. Their conversation has drifted from the past to the present.

"But he had a good taste in music," Beca counters. They're talking about Luke. Beca's school girl crush on him. "And some rocking abs. You should know." And Aubrey's brief affair with him.

Aubrey grimaces. "I can't believe I did that."

"I can't believe I didn't know about it."

"That's because I didn't tell anybody," Aubrey says, rising to walk towards Beca's shelves.

"Not even Chloe?"

She shakes her head, her fingers tracing Beca's extensive CD collection. "I didn't know people still have these."

"You can still buy them," Beca tells her.

"Really?" her hand stops at one of Beca's CDs. Beca knows which one it is.

"Yup, people still like tangible things."

She pulls the CD out. "Like you apparently." It's a CD of the songs the Bellas did in Beca's four years in Barden. She reads Beca's lazy scrawl at the back. "Oh my god!" Aubrey cries out. "You even have the songs we did for regionals and semifinals."

"Yeah, I took them from the live webcasts. I tried to clean them but you can still hear some of the commentary and the audience cheers."

"Let's listen to it," Aubrey says, already moving towards Beca's computer.

Beca expects her to pick the performance that won them nationals, or even the one they did at regionals but Aubrey clicks on their performance at semifinals.

"Isn't that going to bring up some bad memories?" Beca asks.

But Aubrey just takes her hand and pulls her up. "I can't do the choreography alone," she says, her feet already moving to the song.

"Oh, no," Beca shakes her head.

"Oh, yes," Aubrey nods. "You have to do as the captain says."

"I was a captain too," Beca reminds her.

"I have seniority."

And what can she say to that?

They miss some steps here and there. Their hand gestures are a mess. And when Beca's stubborn voice comes on, Aubrey doesn't cringe. Instead, she nudges Beca to sing along while she sings her part. By Eternal Flame, they both have given up and start swaying to each other's hips.

"I actually liked what you did," Aubrey says, her hands on Beca's hips.

"I know," Beca says like she has known all along. Because if she thinks about it, there were these moments when she stared defiantly at Aubrey's furious face and saw a girl who twitched with doubt.

Beca feels a longing creeping in her stomach. Maybe if she had asked Aubrey what it was, their story would turn out differently. In some unknown way that would have given Beca the privilege of witnessing a girl whose shoulders were always stiff with her father's expectations grow into this woman before her who looks younger than she was the last time Beca saw her.

"It's the dim lighting," Aubrey says when Beca tells her.

The dim lighting does bring many illusions like making Beca feel as if they're dancing under the moonlight but not that.

So Beca just smiles and says, "I don't think so."

And she sees that twitch in Aubrey's shoulder. "You can't say that."

"Why?" Beca asks this time because Aubrey is going to be gone tomorrow and she doesn't want to wake up to what ifs tomorrow.

"Because…" Aubrey hesitates.

The track has moved on to their performance at finals. But their bodies still move slowly, out of sync from the upbeat rhythm of Price Tag.

"Because?" Beca repeats after her.

Aubrey furrows her eyebrows. The twitch is gone and is replaced by that suspicious squint Beca is so familiar with.

She knows that Beca knows.

"You do know that I'm leaving tomorrow?" she asks.

"I know."

"And you're okay with that?"

She slides her hands up to Aubrey's shoulders to prepare herself. Because Aubrey is already tilting her head down.

"Are _you_ okay with it?" Beca asks.

Aubrey leans down and Beca pulls herself up on her toes. They kiss. But then Aubrey quickly pulls away, "But tomorrow…"

"Let me have you tonight. And we'll think about tomorrow well, tomorrow."

Again, Aubrey answers her with a kiss, fitting all the kisses they've missed for the past fourteen years in it.

...

Beca wakes up the next morning with her head on Aubrey's chest. She looks up and is met with Aubrey's gaze.

"Did I wake you up?" Aubrey asks, her voice quiet as if Beca is still asleep and she doesn't want to wake her up again.

Beca hums. "What time is it?"

"Something like seven."

It's a Sunday so, "The morning DJ is going to be here in an hour."

"Should we get dressed?"

"We should."

But they don't move.

They will, eventually. Because Beca has Sam and Aubrey has her adventures. But if they could just prolong this moment for five more minutes…just five more minutes.

So they lie next to each other, unmoving.

And as she listens to Aubrey's heartbeat, Beca starts to think about the events that led her to this moment.

Two years ago, she was offered the manager position at this radio station. Which caused her to move to this city. And enrolled Sam at a school where Aubrey's sister is the president of the PTA.

The way those events arranged themselves like they did makes her almost believe in fate.

But she knows if she asks a mathematician what the probability of her meeting Aubrey yesterday is, they will have an answer. And she likes that because fate isn't something she can learn. So she doesn't know whether fate will favor a head or a tail when she flips a coin. But with probability, everything is possible. It's just a question of what number it is.

And that gives her hope that when they have to say goodbye, it won't be a permanent one.


End file.
